Nathanael Greene is battling a fever and away from the battlefield when 20,000 British and Hessian troops storm ashore.

09:14 AM EDT on Monday, June 5, 2006

BY GERALD M. CARBONE
Journal Staff Writer

Summer of 1776 was an eventful time in the life of Nathanael Greene. Rhode Island College, later Brown University, gave him an honorary degree, which meant a lot to a man who often felt insecure about his lack of a formal education.

In August of that year he was made major general, at age 34 the youngest of Washington's generals. What made Greene happiest about the appointment was that the title gave him a chance to name a few aides-de-camp who could deal with the paperwork -- issuing passes to and from camp, answering requests for supplies, and other innumerable administrative duties that bogged him down.

Journal graphic / Tom Murphy

The Battle of Long Island: Under cover of darkness, the British moved around the Americans' eastern flank and were able to push them back and trap them at Brooklyn Heights.

He named three aides, including Rhode Islanders William Blodget and Ezekiel Cornell, known by the troops as "Old Snarl." Blodget, a heavyset fellow, was a natural comedian who had been an actor before the war; Cornell was a dependable disciplinarian.

For his third aide, Greene picked an odd Englishman named Thomas Paine. With a long, low-slung nose and keen, narrow eyes, Paine looked a bit like a puffin. In London he'd been a debtor and ne'er-do-well, but Ben Franklin met him there, was charmed by the man's intellect and wrote him a letter of introduction to Philadelphia society. Now in 1776, Paine was the author of a famous pamphlet called "Common Sense," perhaps the greatest bestseller ever published in America. The pamphlet sold 120,000 copies, roughly 1 book for every 25 people in the country. To achieve that today, a book would have to sell more than 11 million copies. Virtually every literate man in the Colonies had read "Common Sense," which stated persuasively the reasons for American independence: "No man was a warmer wisher for a reconciliation than myself, before the fatal nineteenth of April 1775, but the moment the event of that day was made known, I rejected the hardened, sullen-tempered Pharaoh of England forever."

When Paine joined the Army in July 1776, Greene scooped him up as an aide-de-camp.

Greene, with his military "family" of Blodget, Cornell and Paine, commanded five forts linked in an arc around Brooklyn on Long Island -- then the epicenter of the American Revolution. While Greene drove his troops to strengthen the forts in expectation of attack, an epidemic of "camp sickness" spread through the ranks.

Greene tried to stem the sickness by requesting more bars of soap, by ordering his troops to use and clean latrines rather than using the ditches in front of the forts (a Practice that is Disgracefull to the last Degree) and by eating more vegetables.

Despite his exhortations, the sickness spread. About 10,000 soldiers on Manhattan and Long Island were laid low by it. Gen. William Heath noted: "In almost every farm, stable, shed, and even under the fences and bushes, were the sick to be seen."

At Greene's urging, the Army's hospital director set up a hospital on Long Island, complete with a carpenter "to make coffins."

Greene was a stern commander who felt no compunction about ordering a man to be given 39 lashes for falling asleep at his post. But in dealing with the sick, he was more humane than most. In letters to headquarters, he consistently badgered Washington to improve the hospitals, which had "but few Women Nurses" and lacked "proper Utensils for the Sick."

Greene wrote to Washington on Aug. 11: Great humanity should be exercisd towards those indisposd. Kindness on one hand leaves a favorable and lasting impression; neglect and suffering on the other is never forgotten.

Within a month of telling his troops to keep clean and eat their vegetables, Greene himself fell ill. In a letter to Washington he mentioned, almost as an afterthought, I am confined to my Bed with a raging Fever. The Critical situation of Affairs makes me the more anxious.

The "Critical situation" was the arrival of 8,000 Hessian soldiers on Staten Island. They arrived with an additional 3,000 British soldiers on 85 ships that sailed up to the southern tip of Long Island. Clearly the combined British-Hessian forces were poised for attack, and here was Greene, now a major general, confined to his bed.

The fever nearly killed him. Dr. John Morgan, the hospital director, considered Greene's life "endangered." Morgan ordered Greene removed from Long Island to a doctor's "healthy, airy" house on Manhattan. Greene, in and out of delirium, was in no position to protest.

For Washington, Greene's incapacitation literally could not have come at a worse time. Two days after Greene's removal from command, the British began their long-awaited amphibious assault of Long Island, now under the command of 58-year-old Israel Putnam.

On a clear Thursday morning, five ships of the line stood through the Narrows and anchored, their guns broadside to Long Island's rolling beaches. These guns covered the landing of British and Hessian troops.

By noon, 15,000 troops with 40 artillery pieces had landed, ready to storm the works up on Brooklyn Heights. These 15,000 were reinforced by another 5,000 -- 20,000 British and Hessian regulars set to attack fewer than 10,000 ragtag militia and Continental troops.

The Battle of Long Island was a rout. Even if the American forces had been well led, they would have lost. The fact that their leadership was abysmal made the British victory even more discomfiting.

Putnam -- "Old Put -- had neglected to station forces at Jamaica Pass, a long, narrow passage through a ridge that ran across Long Island. The British sent 10,000 soldiers marching unmolested through that pass, moving slowly but as smoothly as a column of red ants. When they reached the top of the heights, they flanked Putnam's troops and easily ran them back into the forts outside Brooklyn.

By 6 o'clock that night, British and Hessian forces had killed 312 Americans and had taken nearly 1,100 prisoners, including two generals -- John Sullivan and William "Lord Stirling" Alexander.

British Gen. William Howe had the American rebels pent up on a peninsula, sandwiched between his 20,000 troops and the East River. As soon as the wind turned, his brother, Admiral Lord Howe, could sail his biggest ships right up to the cliffs outside Brooklyn. In a vice between the land troops and the cannon of the ships, Putnam would have no choice but to surrender 9,000 men and their equipment, nearly half the American Army.

"This business is pretty near over," Lord Percy wrote home to his father.

All Howe needed was a shift in the wind and his ships could draw up for the endgame. But in waiting for the wind to shift, he was like a cat toying with its prey.

gcarbone@projo.com / (401) 277-7434